Börte Chino and Gua Maral

Also Known As: Börte Chino, “blue-grey wolf”, also Börte Chono, Börte-Činō; Gua Maral, “beautiful doe”, in the oldest text Qo’ai Maral, “fallow doe”, also Goa Maral
Region/Culture: Central Asia
Mythos: Mongolian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Börte Chino is born with a destiny set by Heaven above, and with his wife Gua Maral he crosses a great water called the Tenggis to reach the land that became the Mongol home.
Role in Mythos: They are the first ancestors in the genealogy that opens the Secret History of the Mongols, the couple from whom the line of Chinggis Khan descends.
Relation to Humans: Every Mongol khan of the ruling house counted his descent from this pair through their son Batachikhan. Later chroniclers, Persian and Mongol, retold them as a human chief or prince and his wife.

Cold water, and two animals coming up out of it onto a shore nobody had named. One was a wolf the colour of smoke on a winter morning, blue shading into grey. The other was a doe with a fallow coat, the pale tawny brown of dry steppe grass. They shook off the water and went on together, upriver, toward a mountain.

That is the whole of the journey as the oldest Mongol book tells it, and the book begins with it. The Secret History of the Mongols was written in the thirteenth century for the family of Chinggis Khan, and its opening lines waste no time. At the beginning there was a blue-grey wolf, born with his destiny ordained by Heaven above. His wife was a fallow doe. They came crossing the Tenggis. They settled at the source of the Onon River, at Mount Burkhan Khaldun, and there a son was born to them, Batachikhan.

Three sentences, and the first Mongol ancestor has a father, a mother and a birthplace. The text does not stop to explain how a wolf and a deer came to have a human child. It names the son and moves straight on to the son’s son, and his son after that, a list of names running down through the generations to a man called Dobun Mergen and his wife Alan Goa, and from her, long after, to a boy named Temüjin. The wolf and the doe are never mentioned again.

Their names are plain description. Börte means blue-grey or mottled, chino means wolf. The doe is Qo’ai Maral in the Secret History, the fallow doe, and in later Mongol tradition she is Gua Maral, the beautiful doe. Nothing else is said about their bodies. No one records how large the wolf was or whether the doe could speak. What the text cares about is the wolf’s commission. He is born with a fate from Heaven above, the same eternal sky that the khans would later claim as the source of their right to rule. The founder of the line is chosen before he has done anything at all.

Where they came from is left open. Tenggis is simply a word for a sea or a great lake, and the book does not say which one. Lake Baikal is the usual guess. The mountain is easier to find. Burkhan Khaldun stands in the Khentii range in the north-east of Mongolia, and the Secret History returns to it again and again. Temüjin hid on its slopes from his enemies as a young man and swore to honour it every morning. His first ancestors had picked the spot.

A wolf ancestor was not a strange idea on the steppe. The Türks, who ruled the same grasslands centuries before the Mongols, told of a she-wolf who nursed a maimed boy and bore his sons. The Mongol version turns the wolf into the father and gives him a deer for a wife, the hunter and the hunted under one roof. It seems to have been a quiet household.

Later writers were less comfortable with it. The Persian historian Rashid al-Din, who wrote for the Mongol rulers of Iran at the start of the fourteenth century, kept the names and dropped the animals. In his account Börte Chino is a chief among the Mongols and Qo’ai Maral is his senior wife. A minister of a Muslim court was not going to tell his khan that he descended from a wolf. Three centuries on, after the Mongols had taken up Tibetan Buddhism, their own chroniclers changed the story again. Sagang Sechen, a Mongol prince who finished his chronicle in 1662, made Börte Chino the youngest son of a Tibetan king. He flees north, crosses the Tenggis, comes to Burkhan Khaldun and is taken as lord by the people he finds there. That gave the khans a pedigree running back through Tibet to the kings of ancient India. The wolf had become a surname.

The old reading never quite went away. A Tibetan history of 1346, the Red Annals, copies the same list of ancestors from a lost Mongol chronicle, and it still begins with Börte Chino.

Their power is a small one and it lasted eight hundred years. They cross a water that marks the edge of the known world, they choose a mountain, and by doing so they make a homeland and a ruling house. The mandate of Heaven enters the Mongol line with the wolf and stays in it.

Their limits are just as plain. They have no adventures. They fight nothing, found no city and speak no word. Once the son is born the story has no more use for them, and it does not say how or where they died. They are a beginning and nothing else. Even their animal shape could be taken from them by any later scribe with a reason to prefer a prince.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Börte Chino and Gua Maral?

Börte Chino and Gua Maral are the first ancestors of the Mongols in the Secret History of the Mongols, a thirteenth-century Mongol text. Börte Chino is a blue-grey wolf and Gua Maral is a doe. The line of Chinggis Khan is traced back to them through their son Batachikhan.

What do the names Börte Chino and Gua Maral mean?

Börte Chino means “blue-grey wolf”. Gua Maral means “beautiful doe”. The Secret History of the Mongols calls the doe Qo’ai Maral, which means “fallow doe”.

Where did Börte Chino and Gua Maral come from?

The Secret History of the Mongols says Börte Chino and Gua Maral came across a water called the Tenggis, a word meaning a sea or great lake. It does not say which water, and Lake Baikal is the usual guess. They settled at the source of the Onon River at Mount Burkhan Khaldun.

Was Börte Chino a real wolf or a man?

The oldest source, the Secret History of the Mongols, calls Börte Chino a blue-grey wolf and his wife a fallow doe. Later writers made them human. Rashid al-Din, writing in Persian in the early fourteenth century, describes Börte Chino as a Mongol chief, and the Mongol chronicler Sagang Sechen in 1662 made him the son of a Tibetan king.

How is Börte Chino related to Genghis Khan?

Börte Chino is the first name in the genealogy of Chinggis Khan. His son Batachikhan begins a list of descendants that runs down to Dobun Mergen and Alan Goa, and from Alan Goa to Temüjin, who became Chinggis Khan.